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Joe Philbin comes to his own defense in phone call

While Joe Philbin had a right to be upset, he didn’t come off that way when I answered his phone call Tuesday morning.

The first-year Dolphins coach had seen that he had been called “disingenuous” and, even worse, “a liar” in a blog I posted on this site a day earlier and wanted to clear the air before this became an issue with me or our readers heading into training camp.

The story began at minicamp in mid-June when I happened to ask Philbin at the start of his daily press briefings why Brian Hartline wasn’t present. The minicamp was mandatory for all signed players and, while we had been told by Hartline’s agent that he had a calf strain, the expectation was that he would be there either observing or working on the side.

Philbin’s answer was that Hartline had a “personal issue” he was dealing with. This past weekend, reports surfaced that he had undergone an appendectomy. That prompted me to question the coach’s honesty regarding why Hartline was out.

The issue to me is one of semantics. When a coach tells me a player has a personal issue, I’ll typically take it to mean perhaps a relative is ill, he’s dealing with another family issue, he’s been given permission to attend a wedding, and so on. I’ll leave that alone and allow him his privacy.

A medical issue is different. If it could affect the player’s readiness for the start of camp _ and in the case of Hartline it apparently won’t _ it becomes a story people want to know more about. And Hartline, who is going to be asked to play a much bigger role this year than in the past, is an important player.

Philbin explained to me that for him, a medical issue such as the one Hartline was experiencing fell under “personal issue” because it’s not an injury. He added that if Hartline chose to tell people about it, as he did last week on WQAM, that was his prerogative. But since it was a) not an injury and b) won’t affect him come the start of camp, Philbin felt it was not something that had to be disseminated.

It should be said here that I’ve found Philbin to have a great deal of integrity and to be very forthright in his dealings with the media. While he doesn’t joke around with the media even in the most relaxed of situations, he has done his best to treat everyone equally and give a well-thought-out answer to every question. Perhaps that’s why what I perceived to be a bit of deception stood out.

This morning’s 10-minute conversation finished on a light note as Philbin said, “I’ll have no problem with you criticizing my coaching abilities, and I figure you’ll get the chance to do that pretty soon.”